After reading Aunt Dimity and the Duke, I was quite anxious to get my hands on Aunt Dimity’s Death, which is actually the first book in the series. The library finally called and told me they had it on hold. I might have had a small celebration with a chocolate milkshake when I went and checked it out…

Lori Shepard’s life is in shambles. She got a divorce, then her mother died, she can’t find a job, she’s in debt, and to top it all off her precious stuffed rabbit gets disemboweled by a disgruntled burglar when there’s nothing to steal. It was enough to make her want to curl up in one sloppy depressed ball.

Then she gets a letter on very expensive paper from a lawyer who is anxious to see her. She figures life can’t get any worse so she goes to see what this lawyer wants, and it turns her life upside down.

The lawyer wants to know if she can tell him the Aunt Dimity stories, her personal bedtime stories invented by her mother. Lori faints. She had no idea that Aunt Dimity was a real person.

She wakes up with a chance at a new life. Aunt Dimity, her mother’s closest friend in the world, has left a challenge for Lori. Her challenge: go through the voluminous correspondence between Aunt Dimity and her mother and then write a preface for the stories so they can be published. If she completes it she will earn $10,000 as well as have a bottomless expense account for a month. Lori jumps at the chance, even though it means she has to move to England for a month with Bill, the son of the lawyer and a lawyer himself, as her “facilitator.”

The challenge teaches Lori to grieve and to let go. It teaches her to love and share. It changes her life completely. It also gives her the chance to solve the mystery of Aunt Dimity’s past.

It was a great book. I loved it. Nancy Atherton has carved a niche in my heart for her Aunt Dimity books.